Then again, if damage dealing abilities are to be doing additional damage to spawns, i might as well just lower the defense a bit of the spawns. Basically make it so they can't block anything bigger than a fighter for more than one turn. At the same time their attack could be increased a bit (except for HU, CC, TM), making them more interesting for the launching player to put them in open slots and giving the choice of blocking or not to the defender.

EDIT - more ideas.Increasing the cost of launching a ship isn't going to help much i think, unless the cost is increased to 3-4, at which point the carriers will rarely be used and that's not the point either.Limiting the number of spawns in play doesn't matter if their defense is lowered, rarely they'll survive two turns against an attack as is.Another possibility is to make the ability available every other turn. In case of carriers, they could also give up their attack phase (not that they contribute much to damage output).Yet another idea is to limit the total number of ships that can be launched from a single carrier. Instead of a infinite supply of ships, after 4 uses, the ability is gone.

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Penney, the "spawn beatdown station" is a bad counter (though it is a nice card). The problem with the fighters isn't just about blocking sixes. I see two other main fighter roles in current play: - permanently "disable" an enemy battleship/destroyer at a cost of 1 (by launching a fighter against it every turn);- launching in an empty lane to attack base (don' t underestimate this one!)

Since a carrierless deck will not fill up the lanes till the late game, unblocked fighters can hit base many times even if the counter is in play. Fighters blocking battleships don't care about the counter at all, unless other artillery is in play as well.

In short, any viable counter should be able to instakill at least one, and possibly multiple spawns.

I like GW's idea to decrease their defense... in that case, many counters are already available, they're called artillery. If a fighter has 4 defense, an artillery turret or two Exions can kill it.

The idea of a fixed number of total spawns per carrier is pretty nice too... this might raise some programming effort though (people will want to know how much are left as well).

Gravity well seems prone to abuse; I hope it would exclude walls? The pink fighter has 5 attack; killing everything below six would be one hell of a card. Darkwing + well would kill three pink soldiers...

Mon Nov 14, 2011 12:35 pm

Williegb

Joined: Mon Oct 03, 2011 10:34 amPosts: 73

Re: Carriers

Reducing the defense of the smallest fighters to four looks like it could be promising. It enables cards in HU, CA to have recurring one shot kills, enables a mass kill in XY, and a recurring mass kill in RD. RV could probably use something, but what's new.

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Mon Nov 14, 2011 1:56 pm

Williegb

Joined: Mon Oct 03, 2011 10:34 amPosts: 73

Re: Carriers

The Dreadnaught is the only card there that can kill a 4 toughness fighter on its own, and it basically kills two once, if the board is perfect for it, and it costs ten.

Mon Nov 14, 2011 2:21 pm

Kuro

Joined: Fri Jun 24, 2011 10:21 pmPosts: 657Location: France

Re: Carriers

I think the more elegant counter is cheap artillery and global damage to the board (shard storm). However, decreasing all the spawns defense to the point where they are one-shot killed by any current artillery or storm-like effect, seems a bit too extreme. I really don't think Carriers to be that strong currently, yes they are good but some decks can already counter them well. Speaking of top pvp deck, I still manage to get crushing victories quite regularly with a certain rush deck, which has no carrier...

I have found it hard to make a realiable wall with any other spawn than crystal core, with their 11 def. Other 8-def spawns can only block 1 ship for 1 turn, and are easily destroyed even before blocking in endgame with a HU and/or CA deck.

There is not even need to add new cards, current bad cards can be changed to answer the problem if ther is really one : the current RV flak turret can easily be tuned to affect all the board, or to deal 6 dmg to a ship for , which is enough to kill any 8-def spawn if you have a 2 dmg artillery ship. The XY Shard Storm could be tuned to deal 8 dmg to the board, with cost increased to 5+. RV Infect could be changed in the same way. The RL Flare could also be modified to (lightly) damage all the board. And so on...

Last edited by Kuro on Mon Nov 14, 2011 4:26 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Mon Nov 14, 2011 3:08 pm

Chyriax

Joined: Mon Oct 17, 2011 5:46 pmPosts: 687

Re: Carriers

im not sure i support a nerf of crystal core def, but a nerf of its attack i would completely support. the point of the ship is defence anyway, so it makes sense to have it able to survive, not to hit hard.

_________________incredible crystaline supporter of all allies and destroyer of all enemies,Chyriax

Mon Nov 14, 2011 3:51 pm

PenneyRZ

Joined: Wed Nov 10, 2010 6:57 pmPosts: 1430

Re: Carriers

I am not a big fan of switching the power/toughness of spawns so that they have little to no ability to actually block. Not to mention it would make pink better than it already is.

In the ideal world, I think they should be able to block twice unless the opponent is using a subtle counter, and if they are it should only be able to block once.

Targeted instant kill of spawns seems to be a bit drastic.

Admin

It doesn't matter if the counter is good against small ships like vectors if the cost is astronomical. Lost Mine is a counter that is equally good against spawns and the current small ships and nobody really complains about that. Similarly, a 6 cost ship or structure doesn't really count as a counter for 1 cost ships. Amethyst Xyloxy is pretty good against both Vectors/Nagatos and spawns.

Flak Turret instant killing - too random to be useful, as I mentioned before

Retaliation - Not the worst idea, but it doesn't really address the problems Rokossovski is complaining about

Gravity Well - Actions are bad counters because the spawns just come right back again

Gravity Shield - This card will make lots of people cry, often.

Ideally, whatever is instituted as a counter should have usefulness in a variety of situations so people will play it even if they may not be playing against carriers.

My suggestion is quite elegant without any ifs ands or buts in there and without having to make things work in different ways depending on the situation. Additionally, it wears away at the enemy's defense from the inside out. It makes it harder to keep spawns around for two blocks (but still possible for the defender many times as well) without making spawns useless. It also hits all their other ships so it can be useful in non-carrier stalemate situations as well. In fact it would be a pretty supreme long game plan in multiples, making it hard for the opponent to get and keep things out. Given 10 turns or so (a glacial pace, by any account) it will probably have eroded most anyone's defenses completely.

It also isn't a really great counter except in a blocking scenario because if each spawn gets 3 or 4 hits on the base before it dies, the player using the beatdown station would probably die before the spawns did.

The least changes to the whole game would come from preserving the way everything exists right now and just adding some things to prevent carriers from becoming a too strong late game plan.

Nerfing the spawns out of existence seems a sad way to address the issue and I can't really support anyone's idea's that effectively accomplish that. Changing the spawns to have only an offensive value is also something I can't really stand behind.

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Mon Nov 14, 2011 4:55 pm

Greywing

Joined: Sat Nov 06, 2010 5:47 pmPosts: 2728

Re: Carriers

Yes but a structure that does damage every turn to all ships has a power level that's imo too high for a structure. At least several races are going to need one to make sure that every (or most) races have some form of board-wide damage that somewhat easily accesible (which doesn't include phoenix and to a lesser extend thunder mage).

If these abilities can instead be added to ships (as an activated ability), those ships have to deal with sparks and retaliation. In a few situations it could be added to structures, but then at the minimum with an energy cost.

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Mon Nov 14, 2011 5:13 pm

PenneyRZ

Joined: Wed Nov 10, 2010 6:57 pmPosts: 1430

Re: Carriers

We do have structure killing cards in the game, and I do still have a proposal lingering out there for a 1 red torpedo or 3 random ancient torpedo that can only hit non-energy producing lands, of which that would be one, so there is already a power level check on that.

The heal the whole team lands are currently rock bottom of usage % currently, so those could be bumped up too to act as counters.

Also, I put the card at 3 and 3 brown so it would be reasonably splashable, so not every color would need to have it. Indeed every color does already have at least parity (their own carriers) and a lot of colors already have cards that completely hose the carriers (scanner ghost, for instance). This moreso if the change to lands goes through that I requested recently as well which would make it easier to play off colors.

The thing it is primarily countering costs 1 per turn and that land costs 1 per turn (slot used with no generation).

The card as it is setup now does very little early game and very much late game, so people would have more than enough time to draw one of the above mentioned torpedoes.

I don't think it is as bad of an idea as it might sound like up front, and certainly no worse than other proposals.

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Mon Nov 14, 2011 6:35 pm

Kuro

Joined: Fri Jun 24, 2011 10:21 pmPosts: 657Location: France

Re: Carriers

here is a starting list of the potentially good cards agains spawns, for each race :

Cards with a (*) could have a small buff or "bending" (nerf + buff) toward anti-spawnCards with (**) should be buffed anyway (they are currently tier 2 or 3), and their current design, although too weak, could really fit anti-spawn combat.

I'm not against adding new cards (and Penney's card feels ok to me), but we already have a lot of unused or underused card in the current card pool, that are begging for buff

no, its just highly effective against spawns. i put a mutate on a greater grav, and gave the AI my entropic channeler+abomnom+carrier deck. his leeches didnt last a single turn, and everything he put down didnt last longer than 4 turns

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We do have structure killing cards in the game, and I do still have a proposal lingering out there for a 1 red torpedo or 3 random ancient torpedo that can only hit non-energy producing lands, of which that would be one, so there is already a power level check on that.

Forcing more cards into the 'must have' list does not seem like the best idea. Making existing useless cards (like flak turret) fill a role seems like it would be a better way to go.